In sweeping changes to Cincinnati’s contracting policies aimed at addressing discrimination, firms will have to hire a certain number of minority and women-owned businesses in order to get work with the city.

Council voted to allow the city to set mandatory goals that go into effect Jan. 1 requiring those with primary city contracts of $50,000 or more to ward certain percentages of their subcontracts to firms owned by white female and black-owned businesses. Those percentages, which can be updated and changed later, are:
▪17 percent to black-owned companies for construction work
▪10 percent to white women-owned companies for construction work
▪14 percent to black-owned companies for professional services
▪16 percent to white women-owned companies for professional services

Companies will have to agree to the percentages and show the city how they will meet them before they get a contract. The requirements will expire in five years unless council funds a study that determines that statistically significant discrimination still exists.

Councilman Christopher Smitherman praised the legislation and cautioned those who would label the city’s efforts as “affirmative action.”

“This is an issue of fairness,” Smitherman said. “There are no people here looking for a handout. This is not a capacity issue. This is a will issue.”

Smitherman noted the small number of companies awarded contracts and subcontracts for city work and said that white male-owned companies should back the legislation and be as angry as blacks and white women about the city’s record.

“It’s a real small group of people,” Smitherman said. “This is one of hell of a country club.

“The golf games are going to have to change. The picnics are going to have to change. This is about the social networks … as much as anything. People are going to have to do business a different way.”

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Europeans make, Jews take.

The modern formula is this: Jews within a host nation endeavor to control the media outlets, legitimize their special interest groups, erode societal standards, and take positions of power in finance, law, industry, organized crime, government, unions, academia, medicine, the arts, and the military. Using the resulting influence, they redirect the host nation's accumulated assets to aid Israel, attack Israel's enemies, and enrich themselves. The Jews call this "leverage", and it weakens the host nation.

Yes me being poor and unemployed I certainly feel that wonderful "white privilege". This "racist white country" has a black president. Seriously why do non-whites and anti-white white liberals have this notion that America is this racist evil white country? Where is this white oligarchy, this power structure that us whites rule? Yeah I mean more whites are well off but are working most of the time and barely enjoy what they have and way more are in debt barely hanging on. Stop confusing Jews with white people, they own everything now Jewish privilege is REAL.

Having spent a lot of my 20's in huge metropolitan cities across the country it is almost like a death sentence being a white male residing in them especially if you're single and without family like I was. No chances of employment or anything.

Yes me being poor and unemployed I certainly feel that wonderful "white privilege". This "racist white country" has a black president. Seriously why do non-whites and anti-white white liberals have this notion that America is this racist evil white country? Where is this white oligarchy, this power structure that us whites rule? Yeah I mean more whites are well off but are working most of the time and barely enjoy what they have and way more are in debt barely hanging on. Stop confusing Jews with white people, they own everything now Jewish privilege is REAL.

Let's say the city of Cincinnati needs an architectural design or renovation, a computer network upgraded, electrical rewiring of city hall, a subway to be built, etc. It will now be required that a fixed percentage of the contracts for such services be 'given away' to minority-owned subcontractors.

What if there is no qualified minority-owned subcontractor that exists to provide Cincinnati with the required service? Do city projects stay on hold indefinitely until such a subcontractor can be artificially created? This is really just socialism taken to an insane level, but the negroes in city hall have demanded it and shall be done!

White people will just have put up with this new law. What's next, a Cincinnati ordinance requiring whites to salute black officers in the street:

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Just when i had hope that Cincy was the last bastion on hope in my state...

Really? Cincinnati, the city that black listed people of German descent and drove them out of their neighborhoods (remember Over the Rhein)? The Cincinnati occupied by Negroes and run by Jews? The city that elected Jerry Springer as mayor?

I wouldn't want to be within 100 miles of Cincinnati if the economy collapses.

This is the media's favorite conspiracy theory. White people are holding down black people. Fact is many many blacks are illiterate and are ex-cons and drug addicts. That's why they can't make it on their own.

Look for lots of white owned businesses to now hire blacks to serve as front men.

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Whites gave us cell phones, computers, spaceships to mars, artificial knees and an 85 year life span. Blacks gave us rap and the dunk shot.

This is the media's favorite conspiracy theory. White people are holding down black people. Fact is many many blacks are illiterate and are ex-cons and drug addicts. That's why they can't make it on their own.

Look for lots of white owned businesses to now hire blacks to serve as front men.

And when the white owned businesses are 'caught' using negro front men, the Jewish media and federal government will crucify them. For example:

Is Douglas Evans the quintessential self-made man who worked hard and has a soft heart and feeling of hometown civic duty? Or is he a serial entrepreneur and opportunist whose recent land gambles may have backfired? Or a perfect example of someone whose growing influence led him to continually bend the rules to get his way and show off his legendary temper?

The 53-year old Newtown native who created Evans Landscaping just may or may not be all those things. But one thing's for sure, Evans is involved in a major FBI investigation into possible government fraud.

As previously reported by The Enquirer, the FBI raided Evans Landscaping on July 7 as part of a probe into whether the creation of a minority-owned company called Ergon Site Construction, LLC was a front to possibly get government demolition contracts both locally and statewide.

The Enquirer interviewed dozens of current and former Evans associates, friends and employees for this story. None would agree to be identified or quoted directly. In addition, The Enquirer conducted an extensive document search of Evans' various businesses (he owns 17 firms outright in addition to Evans Landscaping and is the majority owner of another two businesses) as well as his land holdings.

The pattern that emerges is this: Evans, who has fought to overcome a lawnmower accident that took part of his hand when he was young, is a driven businessman willing to take chances. Evans is also known as a controlling and demanding figure in both his personal and professional lives, at times throwing sharp elbows in the rough and tumble world of professional landscaping.

But Evans also has branched out well beyond landscaping and can legitimately be called Newtown's biggest land baron. Yet he also has a soft side, especially for children and charities, perhaps an outcome of that childhood injury.

Evans declined comment through his lawyer Benjamin Dusing, who said in a statement that "it is unfortunate that in these situations there is often a rush to judgment in the public's mind."

"To the extent there are people out there making assumptions and drawing conclusions, that's a shame," Dusing wrote in an email to The Enquirer. "The facts here will bear out that, far from perpetrating any kind of scheme, Doug Evans helped a guy out and unfortunately that guy essentially tried to shake Doug down.

"What transpired here goes to the heart of everything that is wrong with the current system of certifying and mandating the use of MBEs (minority businesses). This isn't about Evans Landscaping – it's about a system that is broken and needs to get fixed.

"Suffice it to say this: there is WAY more to this story." (Dusing's emphasis)

The mulch business 'smells like money'

Evans started his now well-known landscaping business when he was 16 out of a Ford pickup truck he bought for $500, he told The Enquirer in an interview back in 2003. By the time he was 20, he had three employees.

"Everybody told me, 'You have to go to college. If you don't, you'll never amount to anything.' I don't like anybody telling me what I have to do," Evans said at the time.

He did it even though he lost two fingers of his right hand in a lawnmower accident while working in his yard with his father when he was five years old, he told The Enquirer.

That injury appears to have spurred Evans' philanthropic nature. In the 2003 Enquirer interview, he explained that he was visited in the hospital as a child by clowns from the Shrine Circus. As a result, he said, he routinely buys as many as 2,000 tickets to the Shrine Circus every year and gives them to needy causes and individuals.

"That (kindness) was something I'll always remember," Evans said.

In 2009, Evans donated half of the $250,000 cost for a new fountain along Ohio 32 in Newtown in memory of his mother. Another corporate citizen in Newtown had already offered to pay $100,000 toward the project, but the city of Newtown's budget couldn't come up with the rest. Evans did.

"(My mother) always was giving back," Evans told The Enquirer at the time. "Newtown is a great place to work and live. So, I had to give back. Besides, I couldn't let this be done halfway."

Evans Landscaping has grown into one of the largest such firms in Greater Cincinnati, taking on both private and public projects and maintenance work. Between 2011 and early 2015, Evans Landscaping had contracts with the city of Cincinnati alone worth $1.4 million.

In 2003, Evans claimed to be selling 600,000 cubic yards of mulch every year, which would have grossed close to $1.5 million, given the going rate for mulch. Evans' most recent financial disclosure, filed as part of his ongoing divorce from his wife, states he made $2.3 million in income in 2013 and had $1.2 million in various personal checking accounts as of March 2015.

Evans' business dealings go well beyond the mulch and landscaping firm that bears his name and into real estate speculation.

In the last 10 years, Evans Landscaping branched out significantly to services that included major building demolitions, which is what Ergon also was created to do. Records show Evans Landscaping scored dozens of such demolition contracts with smaller cities throughout Greater Cincinnati.

Evans owns 17 firms outright, and owns at least 70 percent of two other companies. While some of these are related to the core business, including separate trucking and gravel companies, most were created within the last 15 years as real estate development firms.

This is according to a financial disclosure Evans filed as part of his ongoing divorce proceedings. His wife of 18 years filed to end the marriage in January and is fighting to overturn a prenuptial agreement the couple signed before they were wed.

That financial disclosure form shows something else. All of the property Evans' companies own make Evans one of the largest private landowners in Newtown and eastern Hamilton County. In fact, one of those companies, BEE Holdings, owns 54 of the 80 total pieces of property listed on that financial disclosure form. At one point, Evans and his companies owned more than 500 acres in Newtown.

In divorce documents, Evans is shown to have been involved in creating the Ivy Hills Country Club and golf course in Newtown, and is listed as one of the co-founders and is currently 70 percent owner.

Evans stated, in writing, that he also owned property that he no longer owns and sold to private homeowners. (Evans and Dusing declined to discuss this discrepancy.) Still, the total property value without those parcels totals more than $15 million, according to records with both the Hamilton County and Clermont County auditors' offices.

That figure is considerably less than Evans and his companies paid for it, according to those same records. In one case, Evans paid $812,000 in 2002 for the property that contains the old Senco building. That property is now valued at $500,000.

One of the reasons for the big land purchases? Evans was one of the loudest proponents for two major projects proposed for Newtown over the last 20 years – the Eastern Corridor highway that could have opened up acres of land for new industrial and residential development as well as a proposed underground limestone mine near Evans' property holdings.

The Great Recession of the late 2000s not only knocked down property values as a whole, but both the proposed limestone mine and then the Eastern Corridor project were discarded after other local Newtown voices protested loudly, making the land worth even less.

Some would call those losses inevitable outcomes for any opportunistic entrepreneur, a well-informed but not always successful gambler on the future.

On the upside for Evans, his holding companies can sell 24.5 acres of land to another group to grow marijuana if a statewide referendum legalizing the drug passes this fall.

Incidents, divorce show other side

The ongoing divorce and other accounts paint yet another picture of Evans.

In her initial filing, Stephanie Evans claims that the couple is "incompatible" and that Evans "has committed gross neglect of duty."

Stephanie Evans also is trying to throw out a prenuptial agreement the couple signed when they were married nearly 19 years ago. The couple has three children, a daughter who is now 18, a son who is 17 and another son who is 13.

One former friend of the couple recalls that Evans wouldn't allow someone to come and visit Stephanie Evans for the weekend because he apparently screened his wife's friends.

Another former business associate said Evans' temper was legendary, and that he went through four vehicle service managers over the course of four years because those employees got tired of being yelled at all the time.

That temper was also in question in 2011 when Evans was accused of assaulting one of his contractors in an argument apparently about money. The contractor said Evans had refused to pay him and reached inside his truck and choked him. While Evans acknowledged that he argued with the subcontractor over money, he said he never put his hands on the contractor's neck. Evans was eventually cleared of all charges nine months later.

Evans increased his influence locally in the political arena over the last decade. He was appointed to the Newtown City Council in 2004, won reelection to that seat in 2007 but resigned shortly before his second term was to expire in 2011, saying that he "could not vote on several motions about to be faced by the council due to conflicts of interest."

According to state and local campaign finance records, Evans never tried to raise any money and did not create any campaign committees. He also did not contribute much at all to other candidates locally or statewide, according to state records, which show his only contribution of the last seven years took place in 2009.

But according to several former workers, Evans would routinely host weekend hunting sorties for Newtown city officials on his expansive property, camouflage gear and all. Several current and former Newtown officials declined comment on Evans personally or on the FBI investigation.

Yet that influence didn't stop him from being sued by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for violating clean air and water regulations. Evans signed a consent order in November 2014 requiring him to pay a $300,000 fine immediately, spend another $100,000 to create a noise and stormwater barrier around his property (Evans Landscaping was accused of dumping waste into the adjacent Little Miami River) and improve the emissions from his mulch processing machines at Evans Landscaping. Evans also agreed to pay court costs for the case.

Evans could face federal charges

For all his accomplishments, perceived failures and possible character issues, the FBI investigation is an entirely new addition to Evans' resume.

He will face serious penalties if the FBI probe into his business dealings turns into formal charges against him. Experts say that federal investigators are probably looking at whether Ergon was a shell company created to get government contracts funded with federal money, but that such fraud is still serious at a state and local level.

Washington-based fraud attorney Matt Kaiser of Kaiser, LeGrand & Dillon PLLC says that given the amount of money involved, Evans could be looking at prison time of at least five years on charges ranging from wire or mail fraud to conspiracy to defraud the government. The contracts with both Cincinnati and the state of Ohio total upwards of $10 million, and not all the state contracts have yet been accounted for. And some of those state and local contracts were funded in part by federal grants.

Evans Landscaping and Ergon have also sued each other over nonpayment of those government contracts, which also may include smaller deals with surrounding towns and cities.

"And it could be more than that if another shoe drops and more contracts are found that these two companies were involved with," said Kaiser. "However, restitution is more tricky in a case like this. The government did get the work done, even if the company got the contract under false pretenses."

Such an investigation could take several months to produce charges, Kaiser said, adding that since the FBI is involved, any charges will probably be on the federal level. He added that as the investigation unfolds and more documents are processed, federal prosecutors could negotiate possible plea deals with Evans or whoever else is involved.

FBI officials have declined to discuss the nature of the investigation or give a timetable for when charges could be filed. The Enquirer learned of the reason for the probe through several sources close to the investigation earlier this month.

Evans Landscaping general counsel Zach Peterson wrote in an email to The Enquirer that the company is undergoing an internal review "of its processes and procedures related to its contracts and with these entities to ensure full compliance with all legal requirements."

But Kaiser also said that perhaps Evans' ambitious and opportunistic nature has brought this negative attention.

"In a little bit of a defense of Evans, businesses want to push the envelope and be as aggressive as they possibly can to make money in our capitalist country, and that's what we want out of our businesses," Kaiser said.

"There are two competing cultures clashing here, because now you may have prosecutors taking an aggressive stance on what the law is and you don't want anyone to avoid culpability because of a possible loophole."